The Commissioning Joint Committee Guide to Competition following Expressions of Interest
Summary
This publication is a plain English guide to expressions of interest under the community right to challenge – and the ensuing competitions which follow all accepted challenges – a key part of the government’s initiative to bring local government services in England closer to the people.
Authorities are required to conduct procurement exercises appropriate to the value and nature of the contracts which would be awarded. And the nature of challenges brought about by community right to challenge make some profound differences to the circumstances in which procurement exercises are conducted.
Successful challenges do, for example, dictate the composition of the resulting packages, sometimes the outcomes specified, and to a large extent the timing of competitions, and the differing package sizes lead to the entry into the market of new and unfamiliar service providers. And there is often likely to be intense public and political interest in the results.
The guide starts with a plain-English analysis of the requirements of the Localism Act, the challenge regulations and the statutory guidance, and their effect on the exercise of client discretion.
It goes on to look at the changes which will often be needed to contract periods, tenderer selection and tender evaluation criteria, the possible role of variants and how these may be dealt with in tender evaluation, the role of in-house teams, and how the burden of working up contract documents for unfamiliar packages may be reduced.
This publication is aimed primarily at the practitioners who will have to arrange the necessary competitions, and at the managers of the services which may be challenged.
This title is available as a book and a bookmarked PDF.